Child seat safety – the right direction

British parents have traditionally been quick to swap their children into forward-facing seats, but there's plenty of evidence to suggest this is a mistake

When the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge toured New Zealand, they caused controversy by choosing a forward-facing child seat for Prince George, because a growing body of evidence suggests children should be rear-facing long after they’ve grown out of their baby booties.

Government advice in Britain, by contrast, has traditionally said children can swap out of their rear-facing baby carriers as early as nine months old. But that is now being revised, via a new European safety standard called i-Size, which stipulates that new car seats should keep kids facing to the rear for at least the first 15 months.

In Scandinavia parents go even further, persisting until their child is four years old, using special extended rear-facing seats. So should we follow suit?

Well, crash-test expert Euro NCAP uses a variety of car seats to secure the 18-month-old and three-year-old dummies in its tests, and its technical manager, James Ellway, advises rear-facing seats “for up to three years old”, if possible.

Swedish car manufacturer Volvo is another advocate, saying research continues to showcase their safety credentials. In one study it reviewed, child passenger fatalities were seen to peak at 12 months in Germany. Volvo argues this is partly explained by “the tradition in Germany of changing from rearward facing to forward facing at this age”.

James Ellway from crash-test body Euro NCAP advises rear-facing seats for children up to three years old

If you dread the thought of persuading your two-year-old to stare at the back of a seat all the way to granny’s, you’re not alone. Concerns about boredom, legroom, and simply wanting to keep an eye on kids in the back, are commonly cited by parents shunning rear-facing car seats, despite them being the safest way for children to travel in the car.

The safety advantage is particularly great for vulnerable babies and toddlers, where their disproportionate head size means a crash in the forward-facing position puts extra stress on the neck and spine. Research in the British Medical Journal explains that this can lead to “excessive stretching or even transection of the spinal cord” in a head-on crash. In rear-facing car seats, on the other hand, the head, neck, and spine are kept fully aligned, so the crash forces are more evenly distributed.

Perhaps this is why the number of extended rear-facing seats on offer in Britain is growing. The Britax Max-Fix offers rear-facing travel for up to four years, and there are even some i-Size-compliant seats already on sale, including Maxi-Cosi’s 2wayPearl. Take up, however, is slow.

Patchy information about which seat to buy and why is partly to blame. Mothercare, for example, doesn’t mention this seat category at all in its online guide for parents, and it has no facility to filter an online car seat search by the direction it faces.

Rear-facing seats are also notoriously difficult to fit. Consumer group Which? labelled half of those it tested as a “Don’t Buy”, in some cases arguing that they were “so difficult to install that there’s a danger of installing incorrectly”.

The desire to keep an eye on kids in the back puts many parents off rear-facing seatsCredit:
Alamy

Fortunately, some of the latest models are Isofix-compatible, allowing the seat to be simply clipped into anchorage points in the car. Some specialist suppliers such as Securatot offer fitting advice, too, while the In Car Safety Centre provides a fitting service.

“The British regulation is that for forward-facing seats, the child must be over 9kg, be able to sit unaided and support its own head. However, while this is legal, we recommend that children are in rearward-facing car seats for as long as possible (up to four years).”

You do need to check that the seat actually fits in your car before you buy, as extended rear-facing seats take up more space than front-facing seats. Most of them require the seat in front to be shunted forward to make room, and for some small cars that might mean little or no front passenger space. If in doubt, Euro NCAP carries out installation checks on a wide range of popular seats, and these results are published online.

All in all, the odds might seem stacked against rear-facing seats, but it’s hard to ignore their one irrefutable benefit; greatly improved safety in an accident. This only holds true if they're fitted correctly, however. So opt for a new i-Size-compliant seat if you do decide to take a Scandinavian rather than a Royal approach to in-car child safety.

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